As Steve Benen points out, Jeff Flake was asked if he could support a Republican presidential candidate who supported marriage equality and said:

Oh, I think that’s inevitable. There will be one, and that I think he’ll receive Republican support, or she will. So I think that yes, that the answer is yes.

(Benen suggests, “Maybe he should chat with Ed Gillespie about what the party’s future holds.”)

Short-term, Ed Gillespie is obviously correct, if a bit hyperbolic: the GOP is nowhere near changing its platform plank regarding marriage. Long-term, Jeff Flake may be correct, because public opinion is changing rapidly. The unknown is whether marriage equality will ever become a primary motivator for voters.

Will future Republican voters vote for a candidate because of that person’s support for marriage equality? Or will they wave away every concern other than the latest conservative pet rock (as Kevin Drum calls them) as they seem to do now? Until the former happens, the GOP can safely keep the anti-equality plank in its platform and hang onto the social conservative vote.

This should be interesting to watch.

–alopecia

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